Aage Bohr facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Aage Bohr
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Bohr in 1955
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| Born | 19 June 1922 |
| Died | 8 September 2009 (aged 87) Copenhagen, Denmark
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| Nationality | Danish |
| Alma mater | University of Copenhagen |
| Known for | Geometry of atomic nuclei |
| Parent(s) | Niels Bohr, Margrethe Nørlund |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Nuclear physics |
| Institutions | |
| Thesis | Rotational States of Atomic Nuclei (1954) |
Aage Niels Bohr (born June 19, 1922 – died September 8, 2009) was a Danish nuclear physicist. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1975. He won it with Ben Mottelson and James Rainwater. They were recognized for finding a link between how atomic nuclei move as a whole and how individual particles move inside them. They also developed a theory about the structure of the atomic nucleus based on this idea.
Building on Rainwater's idea that a nucleus might be shaped like an irregular liquid drop, Bohr and Mottelson created a detailed theory. This theory matched what scientists observed in experiments very well. Aage's father, Niels Bohr, had won the Nobel Prize in 1922. This made Aage and his father one of only a few father-son pairs to both win the Nobel Prize. They were also one of four pairs to both win the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Early Life and Education
Aage Niels Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on June 19, 1922. He was the fourth of six sons of the famous physicist Niels Bohr and his wife Margrethe Bohr. His family lived at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagen. This place is now known as the Niels Bohr Institute. Aage grew up surrounded by many scientists who worked with his father.
In 1932, his family moved to the Carlsberg Æresbolig. This was a special mansion given to important Danish people in science, literature, or art. Bohr went to high school in Copenhagen. In 1940, he started studying physics at the University of Copenhagen. He often helped his father with letters and articles about physics.
In September 1943, during World War II, the Bohr family learned they were in danger. The Nazis considered them Jewish because Aage's grandmother was Jewish. The Danish resistance helped the family escape by sea to Sweden. Aage then flew to Britain in October 1943. He traveled on a special, fast bomber plane that had been changed to carry important people. He lay on a mattress in the plane's bomb bay during the three-hour flight.
When he arrived in London, Bohr joined his father. He became a junior researcher for the British government. But he mostly worked as his father's personal assistant. They both worked on the British atomic bomb project, called Tube Alloys. In December 1943, they visited the United States. There, his father was a consultant for the Manhattan Project, which was the American atomic bomb project. To keep them safe, they used false names. Aage was James Baker, and his father was Nicholas Baker.
In 1945, the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, Robert Oppenheimer, asked them to check the design of a part for the atomic bomb. They confirmed it would work. This helped ease worries about the design. The parts worked perfectly in the atomic bombs used at the end of the war in August 1945.
Career and Discoveries
After the war ended in August 1945, Bohr went back to Denmark. He finished his university studies and earned a master's degree in 1946. In 1948, Bohr joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. While visiting Columbia University, he met Isidor Isaac Rabi. Rabi got him interested in new findings about deuterium, a type of hydrogen. This led Bohr to become a visiting researcher at Columbia from 1949 to 1950. While in the United States, Bohr married Marietta Soffer in 1950. They had three children.
By the late 1940s, scientists knew that existing models could not fully explain the properties of atomic nuclei. One model was the liquid drop model, which Niels Bohr had helped develop. The shell model, created in 1949, explained some features, like "magic numbers" in nuclei. However, some properties, like the uneven shape of charge in certain nuclei, still couldn't be explained.
In 1950, James Rainwater from Columbia University suggested a new idea for the liquid drop model. He thought it could explain why some nuclei were not perfectly round. Rainwater imagined a nucleus like a balloon with balls inside that push on its surface. He talked about this idea with Aage Bohr, who was visiting Columbia. Bohr had also thought of a similar idea on his own. He had submitted a paper about the same problem around the same time. Bohr pictured a spinning, unevenly shaped nucleus with a kind of surface tension. Bohr continued to develop this idea. In 1951, he published a paper that explained how the movements of the nucleus's surface were connected to the movements of its individual particles.
When Bohr returned to Copenhagen in 1950, he started working with Ben Mottelson. They compared Bohr's new theory with actual experimental data. In three papers published in 1952 and 1953, Bohr and Mottelson showed that their theory matched the experiments very well. For example, they showed that the energy levels of some nuclei could be explained by a spinning motion. This work helped bring together the shell model and Rainwater's idea. Their discoveries led to many new studies in physics.
Bohr, Mottelson, and Rainwater were given the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physics together. This was for their discovery of the link between how atomic nuclei move as a group and how particles move inside them. It was also for developing the theory of the atomic nucleus's structure based on this link.
Bohr received his doctorate degree from the University of Copenhagen in 1954. His thesis was about "Rotational States of Atomic Nuclei." He became a professor at the University of Copenhagen in 1956. After his father passed away in 1962, Aage took over as director of the Niels Bohr Institute. He held this position until 1970 and remained active there until he retired in 1992. He also helped start the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) in 1957 and was its director from 1975 to 1981.
Besides the Nobel Prize, Aage Bohr won many other awards. These included the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics in 1960 and the Atoms for Peace Award in 1969. Bohr and Mottelson kept working together. They published a two-volume book called Nuclear Structure. The first part came out in 1969, and the second in 1975.
In 1972, he received an honorary doctorate degree from the Norwegian Institute of Technology. In 1981, Bohr became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.
His first wife, Marietta, passed away in 1978. In 1981, he married Bente Scharff Meyer. His son, Tomas Bohr, is also a Professor of Physics. Aage Bohr died in Copenhagen on September 9, 2009. He was survived by his second wife and children.
See also
In Spanish: Aage Niels Bohr para niños
